The History of the Colonies

This is an article written by Stuart Ransom. The sources used were "The Encyclopedia Galactica" and transcripts from the original episodes. While the Material covered in this article is NOT the creativity of Mr. Ransom he is the creative mind behind the Compilation of this information.

In the ancient legends, the Lords who first settled on Kobol were visited by beings whom they called Angels. These Angelswere always pictured garbed in white. It is said that the Angels gave the humans the beginnings of their science. Not only that, but also handed down to them the Word of God, immutable laws for living a righteous life. The Angels gave various prophets brief glimpses of the Light of Good and Truth that inspired them and their disciples from that time forth. Some have suggested that the sudden appearance of the Pyramids on Kobol is itself evidence of contact with a superior civilization.

For millennia the race of humans flourished on Kobol. The planet was extraordinarily rich in resources. The humans lived in nearparadise, living on a planet capable of providing most of its needs. It was a civilization of peace. No war was even known. Power struggles over land and wealth were conducted without treachery or combat. The first book written by the people of Kobol was the book of the Word. It was written around Yahren 1000. Its sources are three thousand yahren of ancient Kobol oral traditions which were mostly stories. Many of the stories were about the creation of the Universe. The book of the Word is the most sacred of all the Books of the Lords of Kobol. Those books were written long after. The Book of the Word was written during the age of Philosophers in the second Millennium of time (yahren 1000-2000).
There had always been an urge for space travel. Around Yahren 2200, the Industrial Age began on Kobol. When space travel had been perfected, many of Kobol\'s people satisfied their urge for quests and adventure by exploring those parts of the Universe accessible to the primitive early spacecraft.
It was known on Kobol that their planet would not live forever. The sun was beginning to die and Kobol began to wither. Not only that but the planets resources were beginning to run low. All the prophetic writings said this and the Tribes were ready. The Last Lord of Kobol ordered that all men, women and children should leave Kobol to search for a new home elsewhere. When the evacuation started, each tribe formed its own fleet to carry out its people. The books of the Lords of Kobol told of the loss and separation of the final days with stark lists of individuals and their possessions. Then the thirteen tribes left Kobol in their ships.
It was written in the books of prophesy that, once the tribes gathered together for their flight, they should first pass through a great void. Once through the void, their search for a habitable section of the Universe could begin. The thirteenth tribe was the last to enter the void. When the other twelve tribes had reappeared on the other side, the thirteenth had vanished. It was never seen again. The assumption had always been that it got lost within the void, lost contact with the rest of the convoys, and came out somewhere else in the Universe. No trace of it was found. Some have felt that there is a power within the void that can transform time and dimension, and that the power had somehow swept up the thirteenth tribe and, while bringing it out in the exact same place as the other twelve, did so in a different time or dimension so that it was not detectable for the other twelve tribes. Many explanations have been offered, but they all add up to the same fact. The t
 thirteenth tribe simply disappeared. Legend, however told of a wondrous planet called Earth that had once been discovered by an earlier expedition of explorers. These explorers sent a messenger ship back to Kobol to report on Earth\'s resources and its characteristics...characteristics that made it the most perfect planet yet found for colonization. Unfortunately, the messenger ship ran into trouble. A plague wiped out all but one of its crew, and its computer records were destroyed in the subsequent crash on Kobol\'s surface. The lone survivor died soon after, but not before reporting feebly the messages from Earth. The expedition itself was never heard from again. The legend has it that the last Lord of Kobol received a communication from another exploration ship that gave the precise clues to the location of Earth. He, unfortunately, was a skeptic and did not believe in the hope that Earth represented. It is said that he arranged for the crew of that exploration ship to be k
 killed, and that he kept the secret of Earths location to himself. The secret would not have been discovered but for some documents he left behind. It is said that the Last Lord of Kobol had carried the secret with him to his tomb. So one explanation of the disappearance of the thirteenth tribe was that it somehow knew of Earth and journeyed there to start a new civilization, instead of journeying with the other twelve tribes.
It took five long yahren before the twelve tribes found habitable worlds. Twelve worlds orbiting around three suns. Each tribe colonized a world of it\'s own. Once each tribe had cleared the land and provided for themselves the basic necessities of life, the settlers turned against the high technology that had destroyed their former home. In yahren 2710 when the era of Darkness began, interstellar travel and communication between the twelve worlds ceased; nuclear technology was slowly forgotten; humans returned to a simpler, agricultural way of life. Separated for two millennia, the different colonies developed sharply contrasting cultures. The Aerians quickly separated into a number of hostile groups, and their colony was torn by petty wars among them for hundreds of yahren. The Scorpios, blessed with a fertile planet and a gentle climate, devoted their lives to the pursuit of art, music and pleasure. On cold Gemon, pleasure was condemned as temptation to evil; the Otori
 sect carried this ethic to extremes, permitting contact between the sexes only during religious holidays of the Worship of the Sun storm. The Sagittarians became a contemplative people, and through the modern era produced humankind of€™s greatest philosophers, while the practical Capricans retained much more of the ancient scientific learning than the other colonies. Consequently, it was the Capricans who led humankind into the scientific renaissance during the fifth millennium. This was in Yahren 4479, when the scientific renaissance began.

It is difficult to recreate the intense emotions of awe, shock, and wonderment that the first intercolonial explorers must have inspired. The tiny sub-light ships from Caprica made the Yahren-long journeys with the most primitive propulsion and navigation equipment imaginable; it was miraculous that any of them survived the long journey. In Yahren 4808 contact between the twelve colonies was re-established. In each colony the Capricans touched, the reaction was one of overwhelming joy at the rediscovery of their brothers and sisters beyond the sky. On every colony, all resources were thrown into the development of practical interstellar transports, and the practical application of the new technology brought 500 yahren of unparalleled prosperity. During this period, most of the colonies established new settlements on other planets and asteroids, such as Borallus and the asteroid Proteus. The colonies also made peaceful contact with intelligent species on other world
 s. This happy time is remembered as the Long Peace.

 

In the first Yahren of the Long Peace ultra-light drive was invented so that ships could move at faster than light speed. Eighteen yahren later, a governing body of humankind was composed of one representative of each of the Great Colonies. This governing body was called the Quorum of the Twelve. The Quorum first met in 4998. Throughout most of it\'s history, The Quorum remained an august, dignified body with little practical power. Each of the Colonies had its own deeply rooted traditions and concerns and was unwilling to submit any important questions for resolution by the group. For centuries, Councillorship on the Quorum of the Twelve was limited to buriticians. It is ironic that the Quorum attained real power only under the leadership of its first peasant member, Anton. In later yahren, the Quorum not only controlled all human military operations through the Intercolonial Strategic Council, but also directed all economic production and transport as well. Improved communications led to exchanges of literature and entertainment that were beginning to reunite humankind into one people once again.

As yahren passed by, the people of the colonies looked forward to the Golden Age when intelligent machines could do all of society€™s boring, repetitive jobs. That dream was shattered in 5160, however, during the Cybernetic Revolt that paralyzed the colonial economy for over a yahren. It was in this yahren that the machines that the humans had created revolted against them. The Colonial code was swiftly modified to prohibit the integration of sophisticated artificial intelligence with mobile mechanical devices. Thus the humans were spared the grim fate: destruction by their own creations.

In yahren 5225, the colonists befriended an amphibious race called the Hasaris. The Hasaris were civilized and peaceful, though not as technologically advanced as the humans. Many yahren of friendship and cooperation followed. Human science aided the Hasaris in raising their standard of living; humans valued delicate and dazzling Hasaris works of art for generations. In Yahren 5547, the Colonies received a distress signal from the Hasaris. When combined human forces came to the defense of their amphibious allies, the humans saw they were up against something that they never imagined. They discovered that the Hasaris were being harassed by a highly technologically advanced race of machines. The machines were called Colons. The humans were unprepared for the massive Cylon offensive, and their fleet was soon forced back to the outer defense perimeters of their own Colonies. This event marked the end of the Long Peace and the beginning of the Thousand Yahren Great Cylon War.
The humans later learned that the Cylons were not machines throughout history. The original Cylons were a technologically advanced reptilian race from a far corner of the Galaxy. As they died out many millennia ago, little is known of their society. They must have been warlike and Imperialistic since at the time of extinction they had already conquered hundreds of other worlds. The key to success of the early Cylon\'s conquests was their development, first of sophisticated robots and then fully intelligent androids. These machines were built to withstand enormous stress, to have great strength and powerful computational capacity. Armies of them swept through sector after sector of the Galaxy. But ultimately, the machines became the superiors of their creators, and their own machines destroyed the Cylons themselves. The Cylon androids, reptilian in form like their masters, continued their mission of destruction to which they had been assigned. Machines that they were, the
 y swept through the Galaxy even more ruthlessly than their masters. The directives of their programming crystallized into a single edict of extermination that called for the destruction of all intelligent life forms in the Galaxy.

Few creatures are more useful to the Cylons alive than dead. Therefore, the number of members in the Cylon Alliance is likely to remain small. Cylons have no concept of friendship or loyalty, and are programmed to exterminate their living allies at the earliest convenient date. Modern Cylons are basically human form. The most common type is the Centurion, a heavily armored soldier capable of operating a Raider or piloting a Base ship, or Dreadnought, and also adaptable to planetary invasion or extermination. They are not of high intelligence, but can be cheaply mass-produced. A common Cylon strategy, therefore, is to overwhelm the enemy with large numbers of Centurions, many of whom will be destroyed, leaving a sufficient number of survivors to carry the day.

The most advanced Cylons are the I-L Series. The Imperious Leader itself is of this type. I-L series Cylons have acute reasoning abilities and can monitor electronic telemetry from up to fifty sources simultaneously. Much more than simple automatons, the I-L\'s at times exhibit humanlike drives for power.

There was no formal declaration of War. The Cylons opened fire on Colonial merchant ships destroying them by the thousands. The Colonies needed protection. The humans technology had to be used to make weapons and huge warships to defend the Colonies. In 6250 the first Battlestar was commissioned. The Battlestars were the backbone of the human defense against the Cylons during the last 500 Yahren of the Great War. They are deep space craft, assembled in planetary orbit. Unable to land, they depend on shuttles for contact with planetary surfaces. Their maximum range before refueling is 500 light Yahren, although evasive maneuvers, especially high speeds and use of weapons can shorten this range considerably. A Battlestars major armament consists of four to eight squadrons of Vipers, one pilot fighters of fantastic speeds and attack power. The Battlestar itself is armed with banks of turret-mounted laser cannons, strategically mounted to defend the most vital areas of the
 ship from head-on attack. It also boasts several launch platforms for long-range space-to-space torpedoes capable of destroying large-scale enemy vehicles. A powerful radiation field can deflect most laser attacks, and heavy armor plating dampens attacking impact explosive weapons.

The humans proved to be the most formidable foes the Cylons had ever faced. Lacking the imagination to respond to human advances creatively, the Cylons adapted in the only way they could: by imitation. Human weapons advances were quickly met by Cylon copies, so that the war remained in stalemate for hundreds of yahren. The Colonial Unification Movement as well as military ingenuity had pushed the Cylons to the breaking point.

It was at that point in Yahren 6570 when treachery by Baltar who was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve led humanity to near-final destruction